


Four Man Huddle

by suitesamba



Series: LWS Challenge 15 Bingo 2 [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tumblr: letswritesherlock, challenge 15, huddle for warmth, trope bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 12:03:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2228340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Lestrade are trapped in a building together. Injured and waiting for rescue, they huddle together for warmth. They each have a big secret, but secrets don't stay hidden under circumstances such as these.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Man Huddle

**Author's Note:**

> A new series for Let's Write Sherlock Challenge 15 Trope Bingo. This is from Bingo Card 1 - "Huddle for Warmth."
> 
> Oh - and the title is figurative. Not all four men are actually huddling together. Sorry.

The basement was small, windowless, and horribly cold. 

In hindsight, bringing Sherlock to the site where the body was found, on the shortest day of the year, and one of the coldest, had turned out to be a colossally bad idea.

The explosion seemed to rock the entire structure. It had tossed Sherlock, who’d been only halfway down the basement stairs, across the room and against the wall. Greg, standing beside the pit where earlier in the day they’d removed the concrete that covered the body, toppled into the shallow grave, twisting his ankle badly. Bricks and plaster and bits of wood cascaded down to cover what little remained of the staircase.

The feeble light they’d had from the top of the stairs was extinguished, though the torch Lestrade had been carrying was still on, though knocked from his hands. He fumbled for it, wincing at the biting pain in his ankle.

“You alright, Sherlock?” he called out as he pulled himself out, using only one foot and his arms. Standing was out of the question. Fucking ankle was a good deal more than twisted. “What the _fuck_ just happened?”

“Explosion.” Sherlock sounded weak, dazed. Lestrade pointed the torch in his direction. Sherlock was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall, his head in his hands. He squinted against the light in his face, wincing as he moved his head.

“You’re bleeding. Fuck – Sherlock – stay there.” Lestrade unwound the scarf from around his neck and scooted forward toward Sherlock. His ankle throbbed, protesting the movement, but he resolutely ignored it.

Sherlock was bleeding from a bump on the side of his head already the size of a plum. He was cradling his head, but Lestrade managed to get the scarf wrapped around it. His forest green scarf. Cashmere. One of the nicest things he owned, and sentimental as well.

Sherlock was oddly complacent during the process, grimacing only when Greg tucked the end in, turban-like.

“Ow.”

“Ow’s hardly the word for it,” muttered Lestrade. “This will have to do until they get us out of here.” He was digging in his pocket now, and finally extracted his mobile. He called up a contact as Sherlock watched. The contact photo popped up and filled the screen as he placed the call.

Sherlock squinted.

“Mycroft?”

“Shut up.”

“No.” He gestured at the phone. “That’s my brother. Mycroft Holmes. We’ve the same parents.”

“Do you, now?” Lestrade put the phone to his ear, looking uneasily at Sherlock.

“You’re calling my brother.”

“I’ll explain later. He’ll get us out of here faster than anyone else.”

“He’s a prick.” Sherlock looked down.

“God damn it, Sherlock. Will you shut up for a minute? Please?”

Sherlock grimaced. Suddenly, he seemed to remember that he had a mobile as well. He reached into his coat pocket, pulled it out and stared at it. 

“Blurry,” he muttered. He brought it up closer to his face and squinted.

“Yeah – concussion, I think, from the way he’s acting…Bleeding pretty heavily…No – just my ankle …Totally blocked…car’s out front…Jesus Christ, of _course_ we’re going to stay put, Mycroft. We’ve got a building in pieces on top of us…”

When he ended the call, Sherlock was still staring at his mobile. Lestrade sighed and thumbed through his contacts until he found John Watson.

“I’ll call John for you.”

John didn’t answer. He waited for his voice mail.

Fuck it was cold. His fingertips were already starting to go numb. 

“John – Greg here. Give me a call when you get this message. We’ve had a bit of an accident and you’ll probably want to head our way after work.”

He ended the call and checked his battery. Seventy-five percent. 

“It’s cold.” Sherlock was staring at his fingertips.

“Brilliant. Glad that super brain is still working underneath that bloody knot on the side of your head. Button up your coat, and try to get a piece of it between your arse and the floor.”

Sherlock rolled his head to the side. He blinked. He was obviously having difficulty processing what Greg was telling him, or seeing Mycroft’s photo on his phone had blown all the circuits in his brain. 

Sherlock Holmes with a head injury was not at all a pretty picture.

“Coat, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock looked down and blinked again. He shifted his weight and pulled the coat down and under his arse. He closed his eyes, not bothering to button up.

“Hey – none of that.” Lestrade shone the light in his eyes and Sherlock screwed up his face. “Stay awake.” 

“We’ll be here hours,” said Sherlock, gesturing with an imprecise gesture at where the stairs had been. “Days.”

“Hours,” said Lestrade firmly. He tapped on his knee, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his ankle. 

“Mycroft won’t come. He’ll send England. He’ll send the Queen. He _is_ the Queen.” Sherlock chuckled, then winced and touched his head gingerly.

Lestrade pointed the torch at the ceiling, running it along an I-beam. He tried very hard not to smile.

“John will come, though.” 

“So we get Prince Charming, not the Queen, eh?” muttered Lestrade.

His mobile rang. He looked down at it.

Speak of the devil.

“John.”

Sherlock swiveled his head, grunted in pain, and pressed both hands against his face, breathing hard.

“Yeah, looks like a concussion. Disoriented. Slow to process and respond. Big knot on the side of his head – bleeding pretty badly but I’ve tied it up the best I could.”

“Tell him to come get us,” Sherlock interrupted.

“Sherlock says to come get us,” Lestrade said, rolling his eyes.

“Tell him I’m cold.”

“And he says he’s cold,” he added.

He listened for a moment, then turned to Sherlock. “Mycroft’s already sent a car for him. He’s on his way.”

“Good.”

“And he says to button your damn coat.”

Sherlock looked down again, considering the buttons. He shrugged. It obviously seemed like too much effort.

“So, the concussion,” Lestrade said into the phone. “What exactly do I do?”

ooOoo

Waking up Sherlock Holmes was getting very old.

Every twenty or thirty minutes – to make sure he _could_ wake up and wasn’t slipping into a coma.

Two hours had passed. There were noises above, and both Donovan and Mycroft were texting regularly to give him updates. It could be – would certainly be – hours still.

He was cold. Sherlock was cold. He wrapped his coat more tightly around himself and did up Sherlock’s buttons. At least Sherlock’s head didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, but his face was clammy and pale.

He stared at Sherlock’s face. He resembled his brother so little that he wouldn’t believe they had the same parents if it weren’t for the obvious similarities beneath the skin.

He wished they had some water. He wished for a lot more than water, actually. He wished he was home in his warm bed. He wished he was in Mycroft’s bed, spooned behind him, sleeping in the quiet, luxurious townhouse, resting on Egyptian-made sheets and smelling herb-imbued goat milk soap in the crook of Mycroft’s neck.

They’d managed to keep the relationship under wraps for six months, and had no plans to go public with it. He knew the only reason Sherlock hadn’t discovered it was that he would never think of his brother as a sexual being, so would never attribute altered behavior to something as simple as a new relationship.

His phone vibrated. Text from Mycroft.

_\- Hold tight. Making progress. -_

ooOoo

Four hours in. Waking Sherlock every thirty minutes now.

Sherlock was shivering.

Odd – he was the one with the warmer coat. But Sherlock had lost quite a bit of blood.

“Cold.”

“I know. It won’t be long now.”

Lestrade picked up his mobile. Time to ping John again.

_\- He’s shivering. Teeth chattering. -_

_\- Coat? -_

_\- On and buttoned . -_

_\- Huddle together. Put the coat over both of you. -_

Lestrade stared at the phone. He must have stared a long while as it vibrated again. He thumbed it to open the message. Grinned. Mycroft this time.

_\- The doctor says to huddle. He’s most insistent. -_

The fact that Mycroft was actually here – waiting – pacing outside along with John, was both frightening and comforting. If they were lucky, Donovan and John would interpret his behavior as concern for his brother. Well, Donovan might anyway. John would know better. John would know that Mycroft could worry about his brother just as well from the warmth and safety of his office or his home.

He unbuttoned his own coat and shrugged out of it, then leaned over and started unbuttoning Sherlock’s.

Sherlock was sleeping again, head lolling on Lestrade’s shoulder. It was practically a feat of engineering to get the ridiculous coat off of him and maneuver his own coat underneath them both so they were sitting on his coat and covered with Sherlock’s. Thank God Sherlock’s precious Belstaff was big enough to cover a small village. It was also going to need a good cleaning.

Sherlock’s head dropped to his shoulder. “Mmmmm.”

Lestrade rolled his eyes. He really had no business rolling his eyes when he was trapped in the basement of a demolished house, ankle swollen to twice its normal size, freezing his arse off with the world’s only consulting detective drooling on his shoulder.

But despite the cold drool spot, the shared body heat trapped beneath the lined coat was already returning some feeling to his numb extremities.

He considered, for a moment, keeping the coat after they were rescued and telling Sherlock it was lost at the crime scene, but soon realised that Sherlock would treat the loss of his beloved Belstaff as a crime and would soon uncover it, possibly barging into his flat while he and Mycroft were cuddled together under the coat watching the telly.

Sherlock hummed again, either approving of the warmth, or of Lestrade abandoning his coat burglary plans.

The warmth, apparently. Sherlock was pressing against him now, his head dropping lower to rest against Lestrade’s chest. A bony shoulder hit him in the chin. Sherlock shifted, sighed, then more or less crawled into Lestrade’s lap, curling himself into a tight ball.

Lestrade’s mobile vibrated.

 _\- Huddling together? -_ John sent.

_\- You didn’t tell me he’s a cuddler. -_

ooOoo

Outside, John Watson stared at his mobile.

_\- You didn’t tell me he’s a cuddler. -_

Fuck. 

ooOoo

Six hours. They were finally working on removing debris from the stairway.

Lestrade was hungry, thirsty and was getting really tired of Sherlock’s head pressing on his bladder. The git had also bled all over him – he’d had to take Sherlock’s scarf and add it to the makeshift bandage around his head. He was sleeping again, after being awake on and off for two hours. He seemed less disoriented than he had at first, but had taken to blurting out random pieces of information that Lestrade really didn’t need to hear, many of them having to do with John Watson.

If Lestrade didn’t know better, didn’t know that John dated women, didn’t know Sherlock as well as he did, and for as long as he had, he’d have thought that this Holmes brother had a little secret of his own too.

As it was, he decided that Sherlock was simply trying to turn the lights back on in the Mind Palace. Reboot the operating system. And facts attached to emotions just happened to be the most accessible material to his concussed brain.

“John showers for eight minutes with little variation,” he said at the four and a half hour mark – eight thirty, then. “He has been known to use my soap.”

“That’s nice,” Lestrade said. He patted Sherlock’s shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

“John makes lovely tea.” Sherlock said this into Lestrade’s crotch five minutes later. Fortunately, he was far too cold, and his ankle hurt far too much, for Sherlock’s mouth on the outside of his trousers to do much for him. “He doesn’t even drug it. He likes me far too much to experiment on me.”

Lestrade carefully repositioned Sherlock’s head and checked the time on his mobile. 

“Mycroft is afraid of spiders.” Sherlock chuckled, then grimaced as the motion hurt his head. Lestrade bit back a grin. He’d already discovered that particular fear.

“I don’t think I’m wearing pants. John didn’t do the laundry this weekend.” Sherlock shifted his hips. “No, definitely not wearing pants.”

Lestrade took out his mobile.

 _\- Sherlock says he’s not wearing pants. -_

_\- Good God, is he babbling? He’s definitely concussed. -_

_\- Well, isn’t he? Wearing pants, I mean? -_

He stared at his mobile. It was taking John an awfully long time to respond.

_\- They’re nearly in. They’re going to try to get water to you first. I’ll be in as soon as it’s safe. -_

Not an answer, Lestrade thought. He shifted. The mobile vibrated again. Mycroft.

_\- Soon. -_

ooOoo

Sherlock’s mobile was the next to vibrate. It had remained unbelievably quiet during the ordeal, mainly because Mycroft, Lestrade and John were the only people who regularly messaged him, and John and Mycroft, aware of his injuries, were communicating directly with Lestrade.

Sherlock fumbled with the phone and stared at it, squinting.

“Still blurry, eh?” Lestrade took the mobile from his hand. “Should I read it?”

“Read it.”

“It’s from Mrs. Hudson. _-John and your brother look murderous on the telly. You’d best get out of there before they kill someone. And take care of that head, dear. You’ve got a lot of nice brains and all, but we don’t want to see them spilled all over the floor. You might think John loves you for that beautiful face of yours, but I’m rather certain he’s just as fond of your brilliant mind. -_ ”

He stared at the phone. Glanced at Sherlock. Cleared his throat. “Well then.”

Sherlock was staring at the backs of his hands. No – conducting an experiment. Seeing if he could hold them steady. He looked over at Lestrade.

“Mrs. Hudson is given to hyperbole,” he said.

“Of course she is.”

ooOoo

Water came forty minutes later, seven hours after the explosion, by way of John Watson.

He’d obviously convinced Mycroft that he should be the first one in. He was a doctor, fully qualified to treat both victims, and had crawled through dozens of similar sites in Afghanistan. 

Sherlock had fallen asleep again, and Lestrade didn’t bother waking him. John dropped to his knees in front of them and pulled off his backpack, then took out a bottle of water, which he handed to Lestrade.

“Slowly,” he said. He fished in the bag for a pair of leather gloves and a wool hat and handed them over too. “God I’m glad to see you.” 

He was pulling the coat off Sherlock, a roll of thick gauze in his hands. “Hold up the light, will you?”

The blood-soaked scarves were off and a fresh layer of clean gauze on within minutes. Sherlock’s eyes were open now, and he reached out clumsily and took John’s hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing.

John glanced at Lestrade. “How about we keep each other’s secrets?” he suggested.

Lestrade shifted his weight as John pulled the Belstaff off of them and arranged it on the floor, then shifted Sherlock off his lap and onto the coat, propping him up against the wall. He took the lid off a second water bottle and tipped it slowly against Sherlock’s mouth.

“Yeah – I think I can live with that,” said Lestrade.

ooOoo

In the end, they’d had to lift both Lestrade and Sherlock out of the basement and move them to gurneys, then into the waiting ambulances.

Mycroft waited for both ambulances to leave before turning back toward his car.

“Hey – wait for me.”

John was coming toward him, carrying Sherlock’s Belstaff. He walked past Mycroft and waited at the door.

“Why aren’t you in the ambulance?”

“Thought you might like some company, actually,” John said. He opened the door and slid inside. “Plus I could use a drink. When they pulled away, Sherlock was telling the medics that he wasn’t wearing pants because I hadn’t done the laundry.”

“Oh, that again,” said Mycroft dryly. He closed the door, then reached forward and poured them each a measure of scotch.

“Greg’s ankle is broken – they’ll want to pin it, I expect. He’ll be off his feet for a while.”

Mycroft didn’t comment. He looked out the window.

“He has two flights of stairs to his flat,” John added. 

“I know about you and Sherlock,” Mycroft said. 

“Ah.” John rolled his shoulders. He’d been tense for hours. “Thanks for not telling anyone – we’re avoiding the publicity and press as long as possible.”

“I understand.”

“Is this where I say that I know about you and Greg too?”

Mycroft turned his head and regarded John. John raised an eyebrow and took a drink of scotch.

“How long?”

“A few hours, actually. I’ve known for some time he was seeing someone – but didn’t realise it was you until tonight.”

“You disapprove?”

John laughed. “That would be like the pot calling the kettle black, wouldn’t it?”

Mycroft swirled the liquid in his cup, staring at it critically.

“We will not be double-dating.”

John nearly choked. “No – no we won’t.”

They sat quietly while the car moved through the London streets. It pulled up at the hospital while the ambulances were still unloading.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” John said as Mycroft looked out the car window at the flashing lights, steeling himself. “You want to be there with him – there’s probably nothing more that he wants than to hold onto your hand while they get him admitted.”

“Pot, kettle,” said Mycroft. And he stood, brushed the wrinkles out of his coat and trousers, and walked calmly toward the entrance of the A&E.

(This "world" will be continued in the next story from the Bingo Card - the trope is "Sick!Fic")


End file.
